a roar to set us straight

We woke up to heavy fog and cloud, and with that, our tiny hope of viewing Kili vanished. Oh well, postcards will have to do.

We showered knowing that we wouldn't be able to for the next several days (we read that there is no running water at the public campsites in Ngorogoro and the Serengeti), and headed into Moshi town for breakfast. We stopped at The Coffee Shop, a cute little café run by a local church which serves fresh Moshi coffee and tea, homemade breads and the clincher for me - chocolate cake, something I had been craving for for days.

After stopping in Arusha to stock up on supplies at the local Shoprite and to fill up on gas, we drove west towards Ngorogoro Park, passing little villages separated by endless fields of maize and coffee.

To enter the Ngorogoro Conservation Area, a World Heritage Site, the daily costs are hefty: $50 Park fee per person, $40 per vehicle, and $30 per person for camping. And if you want to go down into the crater, it's an additional $200! And of course most people do go down the crater. Who wouldn't? When you've come all the way out here, paid the necessary fees, it would be criminal not to see the lake and game life down below.

Due to the 24 hour permit regulation, you have to be very careful when you enter the Park, making sure you leave enough time to see the sights and exit the Park before it expires. We entered Ngorogoro's gates at 16:30 which was perfect, enough time to marvel at the crater from the outer rim and to reach our designated public campsite before dark.

For those visitors continuing onwards to the Serengeti (like we were planning on doing), timing is even more crucial as Ngorogoro and Serengeti share a border, so once you leave one Park, your next 24 hour Park permit starts ticking down.

Although our guidebook mentioned Simba A public campsite to be "dirty, noisy, crowded and cold", we found it to be quite pleasant. We were travelling during the low-season, but there were several other independent travellers and a small group of overlanders as well. There were no showers to speak of (like we had anticipated) and it was extremely cold and windy, but the setting couldn't be more stunning, with a grassy hill and a magnificent view of the crater below.

We had no charcoal left to barbeque our steaks, so while Matt went in search of some firewood, I went to ask the overlander's cook to see if we could buy some charcoal from him. At first he apologized and said he needed it for his guests tomorrow, but then he had a change of heart and came hollering to me, saying he could sell me the rest of the bag for 3000 Shillings, enough to send his driver to the next campsite and buy some more.

So thanks to the kindness of a stranger (and there's a lot of it here), in the end we had a lovely charcoal steak dinner. But while the steaks were sizzling on the grill, we heard a loud low grumble from the nearby bush. Neither of us said it but it most definitely sounded like a lion's roar. The wind was picking up again and blowing towards the bush, no doubt taking the scent of meat (and us) with it. We packed up quickly, and when the steak was done cooking, hurried into the little covered hut to join the others and eat our dinner in relative safety.

Later that evening, the rangers came around, asking to see everyone's permit. He remarked that we were not allowed to have campfires in non-designated sites as it was too dangerous. Yes Sir, we wouldn't do it again.


Start: Honey Badger Lodge, Moshi, TAN. 10:40
End: Ngorogoro Simba A Campsite, TAN. 17:30
Distance Traveled: 261 km
Road Conditions: some tar, some off-road, plenty of potholes
Temperature: fresh during day, and very cold and very windy at night.